The Passage of the Duck
by Capritarius
Summary: This doesn't actually have anything to do with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  But it was the closest I could get.
1. Chapter 1

The day came to pass that George LaClangula woke up in the morning only to be force-fed a section of his roof. He'd been meaning to fix the water damage for a while, but unfortunately, his schedule was such that a mundane and helpful event as low on the ceiling as roof-fixing was both underneath and beyond his means. So George just sucked it up (not literally) and immediately wrote down a long-winded speech on the hazardous effects global warming has on weather. Undoubtedly, the extra illumination was frying the brains of the clouds, and thus humanity should wage war on said clouds, which were proven with utmost aplomb to be the root of evil.

George was a Politician

George slinked grumblingly out of bed, stalked over to the bedroom, and, stomping his feet with zealous rage, broke yet another hole, this time in the second-floor floor, which is really the first-floor ceiling, so it's all good: nothing new, same old, fool me once…

Anyway, George, now several hundred skin cells and several milliliters of blood less in his foot, took a shower and was greeted by his friendly neighbourhood spider, living in the waterspout. Deciding he'd be better off without a shower, he went to the bathtub only to find a dead gazelle within.

Don't ask me how it got there, that's just life.

George got out of the house as fast as he could, only to trip over a box lying on his doorstep and perform a perfect faceplant on the newly made asphalt, which stuck lovingly to his face. Annoyed and with half of his face gummed up, he crept up to the box with all of his wolfish politicianal predatorialness and kicked it. He stubbed his toe terribly.

Now with both feet partially out of commission, poor George LaClangula swore loudly, scaring many children (who had had, until then, clean and pure upbringings with great emphasis on facewash and celery stalks), and examined the box more carefully.

The box was rather small, and perfectly cubic: About the size of his head, and very solid (not to imply that George had a square head). Inscribed on its left side was a halo. Inscribed on its right side was a pair of wings. Inscribed on the bottom was a tube of toothpaste. It's material was less like cardboard and more like metal, and less like metal and more like rubber, and less like rubber and more like-dare he even think it?-flesh.

Thus came George to be standing on his doorstep, perplexed and distressed to be holding such an organic-feeling box.

It gave him the jibblies.

Upon the top of the box he found an envelope, and upon the envelope were printed these words, written in vivid pink ink.

"From the powers less high and mighty than what one might expect (or believe [which are rather the same), to George Mergin LaClangula, and through the undoubtedly powerful systems of eBay and those weird guys in the tan suits and box trucks. Sans one.

Containing the Hopes and Dreams of all Humanity"

George looked at the envelope. He turned it over and stared at the flat blankness of its flat blank back. He looked at the front again. He stared at the box. He hefted the box and tested for weight. He was surprised that the box was about as light as his newly born baby cousin, Luper. He was struck with an odd chord of anxiety as the sound of the word "Luper" twanged through his mind, like an out-of-tune piano. He set the box down. He opened the envelope. He was bemused to find nothing inside. I am now typing this with one hand because the other was removed as punishment for overuse of the word 'he.'

That's just life.

Examining the box again, George found no obvious seams or any such things as to clues as to the entry points of the box. George rather'd not to pry it open or smash it with his Happy Hammer. Thus, with the spirit of the free American, he couldn't learn from it, he couldn't conquer it, it possessed no land or resources for him to pilfer, so he just let it have its own little area separate from his. He buried it and stomped the ground.

He wasn't the first.


	2. Chapter 2

On his way to work, George chanced to look in his rearview mirror and nearly got a heart attack and narrowly missed crashing into an old man (the old man, incidentally, then had a heart attack and died 43 hours later in a hospital. Don't ask me which, that's a stupid question and you'll get a stupid answer. Matzah.) In George's back seat, sitting merrily and without a care in the world, was his demonic flesh-box.

George was followed by his Demon Flesh-Box all day. Up the stairs, down the hall, into his office, under his desk, out the door, in the bathroom, down the stairs, through the street, into the coffee shop (freaked out the donut-man at the counter: ha! Fatty!), across the way, down an alley, over a river, under a fence, up the lane and into his crazy grandmother's house.

All without a map.

Consulting with his grandmother calmed George down somewhat. His grandmother had once dreamed the numbers of the winning lottery ticket and had won big. With such occult power at her disposal, surely she would know what to do about the Flesh-Box?

Explaining the dilemma took a bit, but finally George's senile grandma seemed to get the picture.

"So you came home from school and found a Demon-Box?"

"No, I was going _to work_, _from home_."

"So you were fired?"

"Fired from school?"

"_You set fire to the school??!!_"

"No, Grandma!"

"Doo-hoo-hoo! My granddaughter, and arsonist!"

"Erm…Grandma, I'm not a girl."

"Oh?"

"Grandma, that wasn't even funny!"

"Oh? Did I make a joke? I must be Bill Cosby!"

"NO!-Look-Grandma I-I just need help with the Demon-Box!"

"A demon-box? Are you playing those RPG games again?"

"NO!!! I'm serious!!!"

"You sound balmy as a Chesire cat to me."

Needless, to say, George gave up.


	3. Chapter 3

Arriving home, George immediately went to sleep.

_He had a dream. In the dream, he stood upon clouds, underneath a beautifully clear sky that contained every shade of blue imaginable, growing from a dusty powderish blue-white to a powerful, deep midnight shade. Before him, shining as bright as the __sun,__ was a white gate. It opened and a flood of non-caffeinated euphoria burst out, and George without an ark with which to hind from it. It seared his soul and stole his shattered spirit into it. It threw George down before a throne of fire, upon which sat a mysterious figure with a beard like woven starlight with eyes that melted bone with their sheer intensity. Countless and myriad golden wings of all sizes and shapes sprouted from the figures back, and in a voice with all the subtleties of a stream and all the resonance of thunder, it asked of George the whereabouts of the box…_

Upon waking, George was charged with religious zeal. He had been chosen, he was sure. Looking at the box, however, he was struck with an emotion that can be called best 'panic overeasy lightly dusted with pork blood and with a side of plum pudding set afire.' The box was glowing. It also appeared to be screaming.

Suddenly, a great, clawed hand sprang from the box and grabbed George by the head, searing his soul and stealing his shattered spirit into it. George Mergin LaClangula was sucked, helpless, into the Demon Flesh-Box. He could have escaped his fate, if only he had looked at the very bottom-left corner of the box with a magnifying glass, and found in fine print the fated word:

Microsoft.

Because you see, in the big business world, people do weird things to get rid of competition.

That's just life.

The next morning, the fatty donut-man-at-the-counter opened his door, only to trip over a box lying on his doorstep and perform a perfect faceplant on the newly made asphalt, which stuck lovingly to his face. The box was rather small, and perfectly cubic: About the size of his head, and very solid (not to imply that George had a square head). Inscribed on its left side was a halo. Inscribed on its right side was a pair of wings. Inscribed on the bottom was a tube of toothpaste. It's material was less like cardboard and more like metal, and less like metal and more like rubber, and less like rubber and more like-dare he even think it?-flesh.

Thus came Fatty-Donut-Man to be standing on his doorstep, perplexed and distressed to be holding such an organic-feeling box.

It gave him the jibblies.

Upon the top of the box he found an envelope, and upon the envelope were printed these words, written in vivid pink ink.

"From all under heaven to and through postal services unnamed and arcane regarding the whereabouts of Truth

Containing the Hopes and Dreams of all Humanity."

A delicious cycle, to be sure.


End file.
